Dave Reardon: Transgender athletics a big topic after win by Lia Thomas

Lia Thomas won an NCAA swimming championship earlier this month. It is still a topic for discussion weeks later because Thomas is a transgender woman.

At least one transgender athlete has competed in a Hawaii High School Athletic Association event in recent years. Her team didn’t win the state championship, which is probably why there wasn’t much of an uproar. (The HHSAA follows state and federal laws in its participation rules.)

As an idealist and an optimist, I hope and believe there will someday be a solution that is fair to everyone when it comes to transgender people and sports competitions. At this point, though, it is very hard to see what it might be, especially since the issue is so politicized.

I won’t pretend to know for sure, but …

… if I had a cisgender daughter who would have won (or made it to the finals) if Thomas were not in a race, I’m almost certain I would question the fairness.

… if I had a transgender daughter who was not allowed to compete as a female I’m also pretty sure I would question the fairness. And she might not like the idea of a third competition classification — which would mean I also wouldn’t like it.

With current reality as it is, though, put me in the camp of Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a four-time Olympic swimming medalist, and vocal advocate for women in sports.

It doesn’t really help one oppressed group by infringing upon the hard-earned rights of another oppressed group.

“I’m really concerned that Lia Thomas is setting the cause of transgender people back decades. She personally did follow the rules, those were the NCAA rules. But, it’s a place that everybody can see this is just not fair,” Hogshead-Makar said in an interview with First Coast News. “We need to make sure that the boundaries of the girls and women’s category are very clearly defined in the same way that a weight category or an age category is very clearly defined.

“This has become either a right-wing or left-wing issue,” she said. “I automatically go to the next step, which is: What are the ways that we can accommodate trans athletes so that they can participate in sports?”

One of the trickiest parts is how to achieve that goal without hurting athletes who were born female, and amid an environment of hate aimed at transgender people.

Speaking of hate, mainstream media is getting some as a byproduct of this, too — something journalism definitely doesn’t need when so many people perceive anything published or aired that they disagree with as “fake news.”

NBC is accused of softening images of Thomas it showed in a March 17 report. Side-by-side comparisons of an original photo by Josh Reynolds of the Associated Press and the same photo aired on NBC’s “Today” differ. The differences include marks on Thomas’ face likely caused by her swim goggles, that don’t appear in the image aired.

As of Tuesday, NBC had not responded to criticism, including a complaint by another photographer, Erica Denhoff, whose photo of Thomas was used in the same report. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Denhoff said NBC “altered my image of Lia for this particular news segment.”

Two other news photographers with more than 80 years of combined professional experience and a journalism professor whose expertise includes ethics reviewed the AP photo Tuesday and agreed it appears to have been changed.

“Altering an image violates photojournalism ethics and damages the credibility of the photographer and the news organization,” said University of Hawaii journalism professor Ann Auman, a national award-winning ethics instructor. “It’s all about public trust. If you don’t know whether the photo has been altered, how can you believe that it’s true and accurate?”

(The Star-Advertiser follows the National Press Photographers Association code of ethics, which includes not manipulating images “in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.”)

“It is altered, absolutely,” said Frederic Larson, a Pulitzer Prize finalist who teaches photojournalism at UH. “When I worked for the (San Francisco) Chronicle if you removed a candy wrapper or piece of garbage (from a photo) you’d get fired. I think that would still be the case now.

“During the age of the iPhone (altered photos) are everywhere and we don’t know what the truth is at this point,” he added. “Everything’s kind of out of focus, and it’s up to us to police ourselves.”

The question of credibility in journalism is, of course, nothing new.

Neither is the issue of transgender athletes. It’s been 45 years since tennis player Renee Richards successfully sued to compete in the U.S. Open after sex-reassignment surgery.

Richards was already in her 40s. She made it to the final of the women’s doubles competition in 1977, and the semifinals of mixed doubles in ’79 before retiring in ’81.

In her early 20s, Lia Thomas is the first transgender NCAA champion in any sport, and time will tell if she makes a larger impact on sports and society.